xp_logs | Operation: Red Letter Day

While researching leads, Wanda and Doug have a surprising moment of contact with a mysterious friend.

The office seemed emptier than usually, lacking everyone but Doug and Wanda. After Betsy and Pete had left, with North gone underground and Illyana back to school, it almost was too big for them, with empty desks and offices doting their workspace. Remy's office had been closed and dark for weeks, save for Ororo's marathon searches through his files looking for something; anything, that might give a clue to his location.

And now, the strange pattern that Marie-Ange was convinced was a message, and not just a catastrophic collapse of their network. An indication that hopefully meant Remy was still alive, and not broken yet.

Hope, Wanda thought, was a bitter pill to swallow - they'd been clinging to shreds of hope for weeks now that Remy could be found but she felt as if this were it. If this did not pan out, if Remy was not found (or was not found alive), then all that hope would be for nothing. She stared down at picture of one unsmiling Carmen Marina Valina; they'd never exchanged photographs, of course, but Douglas had found it on the internet. She almost wished he hadn't as she placed it on the cork board. "Well," she said quietly, "let us continue."

Doug fished out several photos of their other assets that had been killed in the past several weeks, and added them to the board. They had drawn the line from the various cities to Munich, but it was unclear what connection there might be to Contessa Fontaine, or to Strucker's organization. Doug massaged his temples, as if by force he could activate his mutant power and discern a pattern where he currently saw none other than the large assumption that had sent a team to Munich to search for Remy.

"Strucker, Fontaine and a sea of dead faces." Wanda folded her arms under her chest and frowned in concentration at the board. There was never a magical answer - unless it was literally a magical answer - in their work but this was different than all of those other times. And hopefully not the start of a trend.

They were already well past the start of a trend, unfortunately. The large question was, what purpose was behind it, and to whose ends? Those were answers that Doug's power couldn't necessarily give him, especially given the lack of information pointing to motive. "I wouldn't mind adding Strucker and Fontaine to that sea," he said, the hint of an angry rasp underneath his calm exterior.

At that, Wanda gave a grin that was all teeth. "Give me an opening and I will make that wish come true." She sobered almost instantly. "HYDRA has no seeming ties to any of our people that have been killed in the past few weeks. So what are we missing?"

"Clearly we're missing something, but I'm damned if I can figure out what it is." Which was frustrating as hell. Doug absolutely couldn't stand that feeling that there was something he didn't know. Between his power and his job, he was pretty much supposed to be the guy who knew things, or at least could figure them out.

Doug's automated mail system chirped, indicating a new batch of downloads from the network. It was an ingenious little system, coded to be accessed through a dozen different innocous sites. While the person would seem to simply be browsing a website dedicated to a general interest, a cookie embedded in the site would search for a type of file on the computer and upload it to their database, cut-out by a dozen different networks. Even ISP monitoring records only recorded the information as standard traffic on the site, and only a dedicated forensic disassembly of the computer file by file could ever even hint to its existance.

The only thing remarkable about the data today was the code indicator of a message sent yesterday evening - using Carmen Marina Valina's unique signature tag.

"What the hell." Doug peered at the screen. It couldn't possibly actually be Valina. She'd been dead for several weeks at this point. With a body on a slab at the morgue. Which meant that someone was being overly clever. The question was - who, and to what end? He pulled up the message, after carefully quarantining it to ensure that it wasn't going to do something unpleasant to his machine.

Doug's reaction captured Wanda's attention and she abandoned glaring at the board in favor of leaning over his shoulder. "What am I looking at, Douglas?" she asked, unable to make much sense of what she could see on the streen.

The message was short and simple, with an large compressed file attached to it.

-If you want your man back alive, you will need to act quickly. I can provide the layout to the facility that he's being held in, on the condition that after retrieving your man, you destroy the rest of the complex. Including all of the data housed in it without accessing it first. This offer will not be repeated. -SYN-

Doug swore creatively in a string of several languages as Wanda read the message over his shoulder. "You again!" he said, punctuating his frustration with a jab of his finger at the screen. "The same person is the one that warned me that the mission where Remy got caught was a setup," he explained to Wanda. "So, y'know, they have some small measure of trustworthiness. Except for the fact that I have utterly no clue who this person is or why they want to help us. And I don't trust that."

"I do not trust it, either, and I worry that this will come to haunt us later down the road." Wanda's voice was quiet as she straightened, a hand coming to rest on Doug's shoulder. "But I do not see another path," she continued, voice hard. "We have lost far too much these past weeks and I will not let Remy slip through our fingers if that is what is at stake. We trusted this 'SYN' once before and it looks like we will have to do so now. Respond back and get that information - I will contact the others to let them know about this latest development."

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out her phone. "Whatever price there is to pay, SYN can come and collect it from us at a later time."

Doug grimaced. He'd come to the same conclusions as Wanda, but he didn't like placing all their plans in the hands of this still unknown person. Still... -You have a deal,- he typed out rapidly in the text box below SYN's message.

After a few minutes, there was a follow-up email which only contained the encryption key for the compressed file. Opening it up, detailed information about a subterrainian complex began to flash on the screen. It didn't give a location, but contained detailed schematics about the construction, systems and layout of the base. Including a room that had been highlighted as a 'containment cell'.

-You going to tell me where this place is?- he typed back to SYN as he reduced that window to a much smaller one, and brought the base schematics up so that Wanda could see them as well. If it was underground as the plans seemed to indicate, it could be practically anywhere.

There was no response, no matter how many times he pinged the account. If they were going to find Remy, it would have to be on their own.